'Star Wars' fan launches InterGalactiCon

Ramona resident Steve Kirk will launch an InterGalactiCon show at the Town and Country San Diego hotel on June 15 and 16. He expects to offer speakers, exhibitors, workshops and parties..

Ramona resident Steve Kirk will launch an InterGalactiCon show at the Town and Country San Diego hotel on June 15 and 16. He expects to offer speakers, exhibitors, workshops and parties.. (Paul M. Bowers)

Julie Gallant

A “Star Wars” fan who answers to the name Captain Kirk is getting ready to launch his own style of Comic-Con International, only at a smaller venue conducive to an all-inclusive, interactive experience.

The decade-long Ramona resident, Steve Kirk, is in the thick of last-minute preparations for InterGalactiCon set for June 15-16 at the Town and Country San Diego hotel in Fashion Valley. He and a staff of 30-plus friends and associates expect to welcome a broad range of enthusiasts interested in comic books and traditional books, movies, video games and table games, and artists and cosplayers.

Kirk, InterGalactiCon’s founder and producer, said he selected the more than 25,000-square-foot resort because its atmosphere is casual enough for people to feel relaxed and beautiful enough for cosplayers to have their pictures taken there. It’s also large enough for people to comfortably move around in and spacious enough to expand subsequent InterGalactiCons if it catches on.

Julie Gallant

Steve Kirk, aka Captain Kirk, brings past experience as a DEF CON organizer and PlayStation executive to his new role creating the InterGalactiCon convention for a range of fans.

Steve Kirk, aka Captain Kirk, brings past experience as a DEF CON organizer and PlayStation executive to his new role creating the InterGalactiCon convention for a range of fans. (Julie Gallant)

It’s an ambitious task to set up a convention for 1,000 or more attendees but Kirk is up to the challenge with 19 years of experience in helping to organize DEF CON, the largest underground hacking conference begun in 1992.

Kirk said he became a senior department leader while volunteering for DEF CON from the time it had roughly 150 attendees in 1995 through its growth to some 25,000 attendees.

In the process he learned three key requirements for running a successful convention:

Understand how to run a business, maintain a budget and manage people.

“Every dollar spent has to be treated as an investment and the startup costs will pay off over the next five years,” he said.

Have passion for what you do.

“You have to really love the content you’re developing because you’re going to wake up every day and be involved in it,” he said. “If you wake up and feel it’s a lot of drudgery, that will seep into your work. But the passion permeates everything you do. I think that’s true of a lot of areas of life.”

Know how to run a convention.

“I’ve seen some people create some very interesting events, but they ended up failing because they didn’t understand how to organize and run it,” he said. “Sometimes the key organizing element is to understand how to present a good experience for attendees.”

Kirk is planning to create that good experience with details such as bringing in couches to give attendees a place to relax in a social lounge and setting up a costume repair room for quick fixes to outfits gone haywire. He’s also recruited informative and entertaining speakers who can share insights and hopefully inspire fans.

“Everyone who has a strong sense of fandom was at one point inspired,” Kirk said.

Some of the featured speakers include actress Claudia Christian, who is known for her work on the Hugo award-winning show “Babylon 5.” Christian is also the author of two autobiographical books, “My Life with Freaks and Geeks,” and “Babylon Confidential,” and the sci-fi novel “Wolf’s Empire.” She is an advocate for The Sinclair Method, a treatment for alcohol use disorder.

Another featured speaker is Colin Cantwell who is billed as the original concept artist and modeler for all things that flew in the first “Star Wars” movie. His designs include the X-Wing, Death Star, and the original Millennium Falcon.

Other presenters will be a representative of a video game company, two teachers from Houston and Florida who will discuss how to teach with comic books in the classroom, a panel of music enthusiasts and The Cocky Cockpit hosts of a “Star Wars”-themed game show.

Kirk said he hopes to create an accessible event that encourages people to participate, something that’s hard to do at larger events like Comic-Con where popular panels may only be able to accommodate 5,000 people out of 250,000 show attendees. He’s in the process of getting the word out to hard core and casual nerds, comic book fans, “Star Wars” and other movie enthusiasts, and cosplayers through social media and radio messages, podcasts and a YouTube live stream.

“We’ve designed the content so there’s a little bit of something for everybody and thereby it’s easy to consume,” he said. “We’re not just designing this as a show, but designing it as an experience. We’re trying to make it a really positive experience so people go, ‘wow, I can’t wait to come back next year,’ and tell all their friends.”

A VIP party is planned for June 15 and an AfterParty will be on June 16. Kirk, a former PlayStation executive of nine years who served as senior director of global IT for five years, isn’t afraid to let his guard down. For the formal VIP party he’ll recognize his Scottish heritage by wearing a jacket with a kilt reflecting his family’s colors. He said the AfterParty will be a place to let loose and have a good time with food and beverages and a disc jockey from Los Angeles.

With Comic-Con tickets running hundreds of dollars for a one-day pass to thousands of dollars for a four-day pass, the InterGalactiCon experience will be a less expensive option. Prices start at $10 for youths, increase to $25 for a party pass, and range from $50 for citizen tickets to $90 for a VIP ticket.

And for those who can’t attend InterGalactiCon, there’s another option Kirk offers — a martial arts-based lightsabers training combat group he runs called San Diego Sabers (not to be confused with the junior ice hockey team of the same name).